Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Published 2016 · 320 pages · 112,053 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

How hard is Homegoing to read?

Homegoing scores 71 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
The novel incorporates numerous West African cultural terms (e.g., 'banku,' 'Nyame,' 'kente cloth,' 'Omanhin,' 'akpeteshie,' 'Asantehene'), which, while often clarified by context, require readers to engage with an unfamiliar lexicon. However, the English prose itself is generally accessible and contemporary, placing it above 'The Great Gatsby' (45) but well below the specialized jargon of 'Moby-Dick' (72).
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Sentences are typically well-structured and of moderate length, allowing for a smooth reading flow. While some paragraphs are extensive and contain subordinate clauses, they rarely become overly nested or grammatically demanding, making the text more navigable than '2666' (70) but more varied than the direct prose of '1984' (35). The syntax supports the narrative without creating significant parsing challenges.
Abstraction: 62 out of 100
The narrative is deeply rooted in concrete character experiences and historical events, exploring profound themes of identity, legacy, and systemic injustice through personal stories rather than abstract philosophical discourse. While it delves into complex human conditions and historical trauma, these are always grounded in the tangible realities of the characters' lives, making it more concrete than 'Gravity's Rainbow' (80) but more probing than 'The Great Gatsby' (58).
Information density: 78 out of 100
The novel spans multiple generations and continents, introducing a vast array of characters, settings, and historical contexts (pre-colonial Ghana, transatlantic slave trade, American slavery, Civil War era). Each chapter demands rapid assimilation of new narrative threads and historical details, creating a rich and demanding reading experience comparable to the multi-plotlines and historical backdrop of 'War and Peace' (80) or '2666' (75).
Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
The narrative often presents events and character actions, requiring readers to infer deeper emotional impacts and motivations, such as Baaba's complex resentment towards Effia. While historical context is provided, the profound implications of slavery and colonialism on individual lives are largely left for reader interpretation, similar to *Beloved*. The gradual revelation of family secrets and intergenerational connections further demands active inference.
Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
The text is rich with recurring motifs that carry significant meaning beyond their literal presence. Symbols like fire, the black stone pendant, the Cape Coast Castle, and water (especially the Atlantic) are central to understanding themes of origin, trauma, and connection. The use of these symbols, such as the stone linking Effia and Esi's lines, is pervasive and essential for interpreting the narrative's depth, akin to the symbolic weight in *The Great Gatsby*.
Ironic distance: 65 out of 100
While the narrative maintains an earnest and empathetic tone, significant dramatic and situational ironies are present. The reader often possesses more knowledge than the characters, highlighting the tragic ironies of their choices and circumstances, such as Effia's father's attempts to protect her from white men. The contrast between stated intentions (e.g., 'good master') and the brutal reality of slavery creates a subtle but powerful ironic layer, though it lacks the overt satire of *The Sellout*.
Resolution withholding: 75 out of 100
Each chapter, while providing a snapshot of a character's life, typically ends at a pivotal moment or a new beginning rather than offering definitive closure. The novel's multi-generational structure inherently defers ultimate resolution for its overarching themes of trauma and legacy. This episodic nature leaves characters and their struggles in states of ongoing development, resisting neat conclusions for individual arcs, much like the lingering questions in *The Great Gatsby*.
Structural complexity: 82 out of 100
The novel employs a highly structured, episodic format, alternating between two distinct family lines across generations with significant time jumps between chapters. Each chapter features a different third-person limited perspective, requiring the reader to actively piece together the interconnected narrative. This deliberate fragmentation and interweaving of timelines create a complex tapestry, similar to the ambitious structural shifts found in *Midnight's Children*.

How Homegoing is regarded

Homegoing holds a literary regard score of 61 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Homegoing sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (196 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Homegoing scores 68 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.18. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
By sunrise the next morning, on a sweltering July day in 1880, H was chained to ten other men and sold by the state of Alabama to work the coal mines just outside of Birmingham.
Symbol: Formal
Hell was a place of remembering, each beautiful moment passed through the mind’s eye until it fell to the ground like a rotten mango, perfectly useless, uselessly perfect.
Mythos: Irony iv (tragic pathos) (irony iv)
He made them all watch: the rope come out, the tree branch bend, the head snap free from body.
Genre: Novel + Romance
It was the way most people lived their lives, on upper levels, not stopping to peer underneath.

Where the story of Homegoing takes place

  • Fanteland and Cape Coast Castle, Gold Coast, 1760s-1790s (1760 to 1800), the main setting
  • Alabama cotton plantations, 1796-1810s (1796 to 1815)
  • Fante coast, Kumasi and Edweso during the Asante-British wars, 1824-1900 (1824 to 1900)
  • Baltimore and New York, 1850-1861 (1850 to 1861)
  • Birmingham coal mines and Pratt City, 1880s-1890s (1880 to 1900)
  • Harlem, 1920s-1960s (1925 to 1968)
  • Takoradi and Edweso, Gold Coast, on the eve of independence (1949 to 1957)
  • Huntsville, Alabama; Stanford, California; Cape Coast, Ghana, c. 1990-2005 (1990 to 2005)

5 things that are true of Homegoing, with the passage for each

  1. Effia's father Cobbe counts seven lost yams on the night of the fire at her birth.

    Cobbe had lost seven yams, and he felt each loss as a blow to his own family.

  2. Esi swallows the black stone to keep it from the men in the Fante cellar.

    Esi took the stone from against her cheek and swallowed it.

  3. Ness's name comes from an English phrase her mother cried out under the whip.

    and so that goodness had turned into, simply, Ness.

  4. H is sold by the state of Alabama to a coal mine in July 1880.

    By sunrise the next morning, on a sweltering July day in 1880, H was chained to ten other men and sold by the state of Alabama to work the coal mines just outside of Birmingham.

  5. In the last scene Marjorie puts the stone necklace around Marcus's neck in the sea.

    She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome home.”

Scenes in Homegoing that Frye would name

75 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pathos, untitled
He made them all watch: the rope come out, the tree branch bend, the head snap free from body. Sam's public killing is the sacrificial death scene of the Ness chapter.
Cognitio, untitled
“So you have returned home at last,” she said, smiling. Akua and Yaw recognize each other, and the mother touches his scar.
Anagnorisis, untitled
“She is not your mother, you know. Baaba. Effia discovers at her father's deathbed that Baaba is not her mother.
Anagnorisis, untitled
“My sister?” Esi asked. So what Abronoma said was true. Esi learns she has a half-sister and her mother's past, a recognition that sets up the two lines.
Cognitio, untitled
It was Ethe. Apron tied around her waist and handkerchief wrapped around her head. H and Ethe are reunited after the letter; the severed couple is restored.
Pathos, untitled
She thrashed and thrashed and thrashed, and then she was still. The Missionary drowns Abena in a forced baptism, a sacrificial death told in confession.

Books that share these scenes with Homegoing

About the author

Yaa Gyasi